place agents by surface normals

[andrew]

Hi everyone.

i have a minor problem that i can't figure out how to solve.

i want to place my agents on a sphere and have them circle around it.

placing them is easy with particle placement, but how can i make the agents orient to the surface normals. ?

i know i can re-orient them manually but i am placing several hundreds of agents and that won't work for me.

thank you.

[Yeah YANG]

Hello Andrew,

Please try geometry channels:
1. place agent by particle
2. use geometry channel simulate some frames
3. use inverse placement

please refer: video 100, geo channel, video tutorial

I hope this is helpful:)

Best,
--Yeah

Jul 23, 2013 8:39:30 GMT -5 andrew said:

Hi everyone.

i have a minor problem that i can't figure out how to solve.

i want to place my agents on a sphere and have them circle around it.

placing them is easy with particle placement, but how can i make the agents orient to the surface normals. ?

i know i can re-orient them manually but i am placing several hundreds of agents and that won't work for me.

thank you.

[andrew]

thanks Yeah i will try that

[andrew]

Hi Yeah thanks for the advise. i managed to get my agents placed and oriented correctly but now i have gotten another problem.

it seems like some of my agents get oriented inverted, and that causes my agents to explode out everywhere.

i can see that the y axis on the working agents points outward and the exploding agents y axis is pointing inwards at the sphere.

i hope you can help me figuring out why some of the agents orients themselves inverted ?

i am providing you with the scene to make it easier for you to help

thanks.
regards Andrew

Attachments:

[Yeah YANG]

thank you for your sample files:)
and we will check it in right now

Jul 24, 2013 6:06:50 GMT -5 andrew said:

Hi Yeah thanks for the advise. i managed to get my agents placed and oriented correctly but now i have gotten another problem.

it seems like some of my agents get oriented inverted, and that causes my agents to explode out everywhere.

i can see that the y axis on the working agents points outward and the exploding agents y axis is pointing inwards at the sphere.

i hope you can help me figuring out why some of the agents orients themselves inverted ?

i am providing you with the scene to make it easier for you to help

thanks.
regards Andrew

[Yeah YANG]

Hello Andrew,

your problem is very simple,
please just rotate them back manually or by some mel scripts:)
and then redo one more time "inverse placement", everything would be fine~~

Best,
--Yeah

Jul 24, 2013 6:06:50 GMT -5 andrew said:

Hi Yeah thanks for the advise. i managed to get my agents placed and oriented correctly but now i have gotten another problem.

it seems like some of my agents get oriented inverted, and that causes my agents to explode out everywhere.

i can see that the y axis on the working agents points outward and the exploding agents y axis is pointing inwards at the sphere.

i hope you can help me figuring out why some of the agents orients themselves inverted ?

i am providing you with the scene to make it easier for you to help

thanks.
regards Andrew

[andrew]

Hi Yeah thanks for looking into it.

i got them reversed like you said. i still find it very tedious to manually rotate the agents.
could you provide a script that would do it automatically ?
or even better, a tool to fix it in the next release of Miarmy ?


also i would like to know why the agents messes up their orientation, something like that should not happen, right?

and. thank you very much for taking time to help me out

regards
Andrew

[Yeah YANG]

The better to roughly select and rotate some degrees, and then simulate some frames, it will attach to the sphere automatically by logic driven.

then use the inverse placement to create a new place node,

I did this in the demo video , and it's time-saving than write mel:)

Thank you!
--Yeah

Jul 25, 2013 4:29:45 GMT -5 andrew said:

Hi Yeah thanks for looking into it.

i got them reversed like you said. i still find it very tedious to manually rotate the agents.
could you provide a script that would do it automatically ?
or even better, a tool to fix it in the next release of Miarmy ?


also i would like to know why the agents messes up their orientation, something like that should not happen, right?

and. thank you very much for taking time to help me out

regards
Andrew

[andrew]

thanks for clearing that out